time to start the interior

I have a customer that buys and trades a lot of  vehicles.  this is his latest acquisition    he wanted a little color to break up all that purple.

  He loved it

   Back to the van. The walls have been insulated with foam and dynamat for noise.

 I have changed my mind on the material color and the design again, but its time to decide.  I have had basic ideas of how I wanted to do the interior but when you start to measure and actually start cutting panels and material you discover that it just wont work as planed.  Some things are minor others require a total rethink.  The door panels are one of those..  I originally wanted to use the stock door panels since they were cut to fit the door handles. but they didn't cover the whole door, and the door handles are chrome and some what pitted.   SOOOO, I came up with the idea of removing the door handles just like I did on the outside.  That will make an absolutely clean door panel with no cranks, handles, or buttons.  Totally clean!.  The windows are already converted to electric, and the switches are to be mounted in the center of the console. That just leaves the door release handle to figure out.

All vehicles from the 60's had door lock buttons on the top of the door. Since I took off the outside door handles these are not necessary. I was going to make fake ones and put tikis on the shaft.  So I decided to make them functional and connect them to the door latch release.

I cut the lever from the door latch mechanism and repositioned it to move up and down.  Connected a rod to it and ran it up to the hole in the top of the door.   All you do is pull up on the lock button and the door pops open!   To darn easy.

 There has to be a bed platform in the back but it has to be big enough that I can sleep on it as I intend to use this van to go to events.  I wanted to get some visual interest so I am building it at an angle.  Wide enough for me but that's about all, the inside is small comparatively since I took out so much of the length. but its suppose to be a surf wagon.  Some place to crash and storage for your gear underneath.

 I got the bug to do a canvas of the fink I did on the back of the van.  Almost done!

I built a recess into the wall between the side doors for the bass amp.  All wired up and led lights to boot!